Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Stephen Coluin
I
In Nicolas Roeg's fim The Witches,la comedy-thriller aimed at children but
equally enjoyablefor grown-upS,Anjelica Huston plays the evil and glamorous
chief witch, whose wicked plan is to turn all children into mice (the film is
an adaptation of Roald Dahl's book of the same name). The action is set in
England and Norway; the child protagonist is an American with a Norwegian
'What
grandmother. is striking is that, in this slightly mixed ethnic setting,
Angelica Huston plays her role with a heavy and gratuitous German accent,
addressingher cat ('familiar') as mein Liebchen,and so on. The conclusion to be
drawn, though unpalatable, is unavoidable: the makers of the film (following
'phonetic'
Dahl's original text, which is characterizedby spellings such as
Inkland) felt that at the end of the twentieth century it was still part of the
'baddie'
dramatic convention of English-languagecinema that a could be
marked with a German accent - even when there is no dramatic reason for
a German characterto be introduced. The use of marked language(i.e. forms
which are felt to be linguistically deviant) to associateliterary characterswith
particular moral or intellectual qualities hasa long pedigreein English literature:
one need only think of Dr Caius (A French Physician) or Sir Hugh Evans
(A Welsh Parson')in Shakespeare's Merry Wiues.Since a certain tribalism seems
to be built into the human way of looking at the world, even if it may have
ourgrown its evolutionary usefulness,and since linguistic variation is one of
the easiestways in which one social group may mark itself off from another
(or be defined by another), the associationof language and ethics in literary
activiry is common in cultures acrossthe world. Nevertheless,the claim of this
'linguistic
phenomenon ro be a universal'is weakenedby the wide variations
which are found in the practice. First, it is clear that the extent to which
languageplays a role in ethnic identity, and the associationof moral or other
characteristics with linguistic characteristics, are sociopoliticalissues,and will
reflect the prevailing ideologiesof the communiry. Secondly,literary form and
convenrion vary from culture to culture, and this will influence the presentation
of linguistic variery and deviation.
285
StephenColuin
II
The role of marked languagein the fragments of Old Comedy is often difficult
to evaluateowing to the loss in most casesof the dramatic context. There are
rwo problems in particular: (i) without the immediate context it is difficult to
286
The languageof non'Athenians in Old Comedy
(a) Barbarians
In the Aristophanic corpus two types of Barbarian speech have survived:
occasionalrepresentationof Barbarian language(i.e. gibberish, as at Acharnians
100),3and (morecommonly) barbarizedbut intelligibleAttic. No clearexamples
of barbariansspeaking barbarizedGreek have survived in the fragments of the
Rivals.This is not surprisingin view of the natureand purposeof the quotations
in which mosr comic fragments have survived: later writers interestedin Attic
terminology were unlikely to be interestedin quoting barbarizedGreek,whether
they were literary in inclination (Athenaeus) or grammatical (Apollonius
Dyscolus). That the humorous treatment of foreignersand their languagewas
as popular with the other comic playwrights as it was with Aristophanes is
indicated only obliquely in the fragments, by the preservation of occasional
'air'
glossessuch as the Phrygian BeSu in Philyllius fr.1.9.1' l.retv to Be6u
287
StephenColuin
orrlrqptovnpooerilopar ('I pray that I may breathedeep the healing air'): this
does not appear to be part of a rendering of barbarized Greek, but seemsto
involve useof a Phrygian glossto give a mystic (perhapsOrphic)a flavour to the
speechof an Attic-speaking character,who is no doubt being mocked for this
display of alazoneia(pretentiousness).
If plays with titles like Lydians and Thracian Women contained foreign
characters,it is worth reflecting that the roles played by charactersspeaking
barbarized Greek are unlikely to have been substantial (the longest extant
example is the Scythian archer at the end of Thesmophoriazusae), since short
scenesextracting humour from barbaric Greek will have been more in keeping
with the spirit of Old Comedy (compareDover'sprinciple (1976187,238) of
one joke at a time) than extendedrepresentation.If such playswere named after
their choruses,the foreign characterizationis likely to have consistedof hoots,
ululations and unusual glossesrather than faulry phonology or morphology,
perhapslike a comic version of the chorus in Aeschylus'Persians.5
A fragment (83) from the Metics of Plato Comicus may contain a solecism
which Plato put into the mouth of a foreign character(a residentalien?),but
the absenceof context makes this no more than a guess.Apollonius Dyscolus
warns that one cannot use the nominative of epouto0 (i.e. epout6q instead
of eyrirout6g), adding that it is found in the Metics iooq vero toO yel"oi.ou,
'perhaps
for the sakeof a joke'.
eQ'o0611
letl,eotv oprQrl,dl"orq
8ervdventBpepetat
@plria 1el,t6rrlv,
eni BdpBopove(opevqnetol"ov
288
The languageof non-Atheniansin Old Comedy
289
.-
StephenColuin
a bad thing for a politician to speak the substandardAttic that Plato accuses
Hyperbolus of coming out with. For example,one of the very few referencesto
a socialvariery ofAttic occursin a fragment of an unknown play ofAristophanes
'the
(K-A 706 = 685 Kock) quoted by Sextus Empiricus: grammarians say
that...the ancientAthenian idiom is different againfrom the modern one, and
the idiom of those who live in rural areasis different from that of city dwellers.
"
Concerning which Aristophanesthe comic poet says: [his] languageis the
normal dialect of the city - not the fancy high-society accent, nor uneducated,
rustic talk"':
IXOPOI?] 6td]"ertov61ovtoponvno].eoq
otit' ooteiov uno0ql.ut6pov
o'iir'ovel"eu0epov
unoypotrorspov.
290
The languageof non-Atheniansin Old Comedy
senseintroduces the notion that a particular figure comes from a low social
background and is therefore not fit to be a member of the ruling classdue to
lack of an appropriate education and (if this can be distinguished) the inherent
criminaliry of his milieu. For this ideacompareDemosthenes'tauntsat Aeschines
in the De Corona(Demostheneshad a liberal education,while Aeschinesworked
asa second-rateactor,etc.). Demostheneshimself,coming from a'good' family,
was nor open to this line of abuse,but was the target of accusationsthat he had
barbarianfamily connectionsfor variouscontorted reasons.r'
It is worth remarking, finally, that there are no fragmentsin which a slandered
politician is associatedwith a non-Attic dialectof Greek:they areeither no-good
Atheniansor barbarians.
In this short passagewe are able to seethat it is not lexical items alone that
29r
StephenColuin
characterizethe dialect. The phonology is in line with Laconian, and also the
syntax (in nop' Andl.l.ro,where an accusativereplacesa dative). It is striking that
the rendering of dialect featuresin these lines (as in other, shorter fragments)
appearsto be at the same level of accuracyas Aristophanes' fairly convincing
rendering of Laconian in Lysistrata.l2There are other fragments of Doric where
it is impossible to guesswhich dialect is being represented(e.g. one line of
Philyllius' Cities, fr. 10); while a line from Apollophanes' CretAns(fr.7) may
have been spokenby one of the eponymousislanders.
Athenaeus quotes a three-line fragment (fr. 11) from Eubulus' Antiope
(c.380?) which is clearly uttered by a Boeotian. Enough survives for us to
be able to tell that the Boeotian dialect is renderedrather lesspreciselythan
the Laconian of the fragments,which reflectsthe situation in Aristophanes'
Acharnians quite closely (Aristophanes'Boeotian is not rendered as accurately
as his Laconian or his Megarian).This may be becauseBoeotian had a greater
proportion of peculiar featuresthan other dialectsto an Attic-speaker,t'which
would have been inconvenient and unnecessaryto representon the stage:the
playwrights merely had to pick out a convincing number of salient features
to identify the dialect to the audience. A well-known passagefrom Strattis'
PhoenicianWomen (fr.49) seemsto attack the Thebans for the peculiarities
of their dialect:
The passage continuesin this vein for eight lines,highlighting the phonological,
morphological and (ashere) lexical differencesbetweenAttic and Boeotian.
The evidencefrom the fragments suggeststhat Aristophanes' use of dialect
on rhe stagewas not unusual. The playwrights seem to have known enough
about the other Greek dialectsto representthem convincingly, from which we
can draw some conclusions:(i) we are not dealing with an artificial literary
'rustic'
dialect (such as the comic west-country dialect found in some English
literature)which the playrvrightsmerely inherited from a literary tradition; (ii)
there is no evidencefor confusion beween literary Doric and real Laconian; and
(iii) so far as we can tell, the humour extractablefrom putting foreign Greeks
on the sragewas not basedon dialect pastiche (i.e. inaccurateor barbarizing
representationof dialect,or substandardAttic).
(d) Slaues,rustics,mechanics
Although many slavesin Athens were foreign (either Greek or barbarian), and
slaves'names such as Thratta ('Thracian girl') turn up in comedy, it does not
seem to have been part of the convention of the comic stage to characteize
292
The languageof non-Atheniansin Old Comedy
Fetchme someof the toastedfigs![anda little furtheron] \fon't you fetchthe figs?
The blackones!Do you understand? Among thosebarbarianMariandynithey call
blackenedfigs'pipkins'.
The last rwo lines (perhapsspoken by a second parry) look like an explanation
of the slave'sinaction in terms of a failure to understand the Greek, but since
the slave'sown words are not preserved (if there were any) it is difficult to
comment on the linguistic characterization:as the passagestands it looks
like a comic version of the scenebetween Clytmemnestra and Cassandrain
Aeschylus'Agamemnon.The abuseof stupid and incompetent slavesis in any
casea perfectly normal ingredient of Old Comedy.
The absenceof any convincing parallelin Old Comedy to the rustic English
'Pyramus
of Shakespearet and Thisbe' scenein Midsummer Nighti Dream was
touched on under (b) above:apart from the specialcaseof sleazypoliticians,it
was not in the interest of the playwrights to focus attention on the low linguistic
habits of a particularpart of the citizenpopulation (the foppish Ionicismsof the
jeunesse dorde,td perportq...tov t0 puprp('the young men who hang out in the
perfume shops',Knighx I375-81) were a safetarget). It would be interesting
'Piraeus
to know if metics could be characterizedwith a low variery of Greek'
similar to the politicians,but the evidenceis lacking.
293
;
StephenColuin
'plots
first of the Attic comediansto move towards of a generaland non-personal
narure' (sincedoctors were notorious for fraud and incompetence,it may be
that the dialect markers pointed not only to professionalbut also to moral
character).Fragment46 of Crates(from an unknown play) is a line in medical
Doric: ol,),o otniov notrBo),6 tot roi rr) ),r1qonooldoro ('...but I shall apply
my cup, and lanceit too if you like'). We havealsoa likely Ionic-speakingdoctor
(or impostor) in a fragment of Ameipsias' Sling (Sphendone,fr.17) quoted by
Athenaeus:l.oyov ropci(oqni0t tdv Ool.tioorov('Stir in the hare of the seaand
drink'), where the markersof Ionic arethe word l.cy6q (the object ofAthenaeus'
commenr) and the -oo- in Ool"cioorov.These two examples illustrate that
already in the fifth century dialect could be used to identify a stock character,
which is not a situation one might have guessedon the basisof Aristophanes'
surviving work, where the prevailing iopBrrq i6eo (the comedy of invective,
or lampoon) is such that specific individuals only are presentedspeakingin
dialect, and the dialect indicatesprovenancerather than professionor moral
character(of course,Thebans may be hated and consideredstupid, but this
does not mean that any hateful or stupid characteris for that reason given
aTheban accent).If we had a more extendedpassage of medical Doric or Ionic
it might be possibleto tell whether the dialect is intended as a representation
of a real epichoric dialect (Coan, for example),orwhether it is merely'generic'
Doric/Ionic, basedon a mish-mashof dialect features.
.. ..','.**-.-..@
Fig.7(a). Fig.7(b).
294
The languageof non-Athenians in Old Comedy
m
The fragments confirm that there was in Old Comedy enormous scope for
marking up languagefor various dramatic effects.This is a feature shared by
modern comic and light-hearted drama, perhapsby coincidence,or perhaps
becausethe humorous manipulation of languageis universallyfound in such
'W'hatever
contexts. the truth of this, it is worth noting some of the specificways
in which linguistic jokes in Old Comedy work, for this seemsto be very closely
tied to particular culturesand political circumstances.
The inadequatecommand of Greek by foreignerswas clearly considered
a legitimate source of mirth by the Greeks, as by many moderns, despite
An old man standsin the middle, naked (i.e. wearing a padded body-stockingwith comic
phallos) and on tip-toe, with his arms stretchedabovehis head. He saysKATEAHIAN-
'He
OTOXEIPE, has bound my hands up', and looks apprehensivelytowards a younger,
uncouth-looking man on the left. He too is naked, holds a stout stick, and is saying
NOPAPETTEBAO. On the right an aged woman on a stage-likestructure extends her
'I
arm and saysEfC)IAPI-EEO, will hand <him> over'. In front of her lie a deadgoose,
two(?) kids in a basket,and a mantle. At the extreme left standsa smaller figure, labelled
TPAfOIAOI, whose stiff posesuggestsa statue;a comic mask floats in space.
It is generallyagreedthat the old man must have stolen the objects on the right, and
'The
that he is about to be beaten by the younger man as a punishment for his theft.
'has
man with the stick', saysBeazley, disorderedhair and a rough face;and what he says
is not Greek. He has alwaysbeen recognizedto be a barbarian, a foreign policeman or
the like.' It is not clear why he is naked: perhaps his clothes (including the mantle) are
'The
among the stolen goods. senselof NOPAPETTEBAO] is dark', Beazleycontinues.
'Characters
in Aristophanesmay speak (1) dialect Greek, or (2) pidgin Greek, or (3)
a foreign language,or (4) make noisesthat sound like a foreign language.This seemsto
be either (3) or (4).' In that case,this scenefrom an unknown play by a contemporary
of Aristophanesforms a fascinatingvisual complement to the literary evidencediscussed
by StephenColvin in this chapter.
But the old man'shands are not tied, and Beazleyseeshim as the victim of a binding
spell, a hatadesis(defixio): he is literally spell-bound. Could NOPAPETTEBAO be the
words of the magic spell?If so, the man with the big stick need not be a barbarian.
'The "Phlyax-Vase"'
BeazleyJ.D. New York , AJA 56 (1952) 193-5 with pl. 32.
Gigante M. Rintone e il teatroin Magna Grecia,Naples l97I,7I-4.
Thplin O. ComicAngels,Oxford 1993,20,30-2,62; bibliographyat ll2-3 (the mo
items listed aboveare the most helpful); plate 10.2
295
StephenColuin
Acknowledgement
I am gratefulto David Harveyfor manyhelpfulcommentson this Paper'
Notes
' Films1990.
Ji- HensonProductions/Lorimer
2 Thesecharacteristicterminationswhich the Ionianmercenarieswereusingincluded,
presumably,the adjectives in -tr6g and the abstractnounsin -otq which beganto
invadethe old Attic languagein the fifth century(for the comic potentialcf. Knights
r375-8r).
3 There havebeen attemptsto make senseof this passage(seee.g. Dover 1963,7-8 =
'gibberish
1987,289-90).It seemsto me most likely that it is made from Persiannoises'
('West1968, 6). Seealsothe discussionby Morenilla-tlens 1989.
a Cf. the conrext of the fragment: Clement of Alexandria Strom. 5.46.3-6, printed
in K-A ad loc.
5 Frogs 1028-9 with Sommersteinad loc. (1996, 247), Hall 1989, 83-4 and Hall
1996,23,152-3 with the quotation from Cavafr facing the title-page.Cf. Ar. Babylonians
fr.81 K-A = 79 Kock fr nou roto oroilouq rerpd(ovtct tt popBoptoti,'standing in
formation they'll screamsomething foreign - a referenceto a similarly constituted chorus,
and Ar. Danaidesfr.267 K-A = 253 Kock.
6 A similar boast is made by the sausage-seller at Knighrs 188-9.
7 Cf. 'Woody Allent worry in Annie Hall that one of his colleaguesis saying 'Jew eat
'D[id]'
yet?'insteadof you eat yet?' (United Artists 1977, dir.'Woody Allen).
s The date is controversial:see the literature cited by Mattingly 1997, who himself
arguesfor a later date (414).
o ..g.for ol,ioq seeThreatte1980,440 andTeodorsson 1974,266.
10 See Cassio 1981 and Brixhe 1988 for the connection between low-prestigeAttic
and the rype of mistake attributed to foreigners.At Clouds 876 Socratesimplies that
296
The language of non-Athenians in Old Comedy
Hyperbolus was launched into public life as the result of a sophistic education which
remedied his deficient education and disagreeablelinguistic habits.
" Demostheneson Aeschines:18 (deCorona)258-52,265; Aeschines on Demosthenes:
3 (In Ctes.)L7I-3.
12 Dialect evidencecan be checkedin the standardhandbooks,such asThumb-Kieckers
1932, or Bliimel 1982. There is a brief discussionof Aristophanic accuracyin Colvin
1995,with a fuller accountin Colvin 1999; seealsoHarvey 1994, Svi.
13 See Coleman 1963 for a statisticalanalysisof shared featuresamong the Greek
dialects.
'a The scholia at Knights 17 see td Opdtte as a barbarism characteristicof a slave
(Opette ydp BopBcptrdq to Ocppeiv. Bappapi(et 6e rig 6o0l"o9). Opetre looks like
slang(so Sommerstein1981,145 ad loc.), but is more likely part of a low socialregister
than a barbarian idiom.
'5 People complain about the languageof their servants,but may in fact prefer
a distinction to exist;seePlato Laws777cd and Aristotle Pol. 1330a25_.8on the unwisdom
of having slaveswho speak the same dialect as their masters,and cf. George Orwell's
'Dont "I
expatriate businessmanin colonial Burma: talk like that, damn you - find it
"Please,
very difficult!" Have you swalloweda dictionary? master,can't keeping ice cool" -
.We
that's how you ought to talk. shall have to sack this fellow if he gets to talk English
too well.' (BurmeseDays ch. ii, New York 1934).
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